Chapter 1

For five years, my hands, which were meant for a grand piano, had only known the grease and steel of a West Texas oil rig. Every day, the sun beat down on my back, and the noise of the machinery was a constant roar in my ears. I did it all for Gabby.

Her tech startup had failed, she said. She was left with a $500,000 debt, a crushing weight that threatened to destroy her. I was a Juilliard-trained pianist with a promising career, but I dropped it all. For her. I told her I would take care of it.

Tonight, I held the final payment in a worn envelope. Half a million dollars, earned through sweat, burns, and broken sleep in a cramped trailer with men who smelled of oil and cheap whiskey. I drove my beat-up truck for three hours to a high-end Dallas steakhouse, the address she' d given me. I was grimy, exhausted, but I was also proud. I had saved her.

I walked in, and the hostess looked at me like I was something she' d scraped off her shoe. She pointed me toward a private dining room. Through the glass, I saw her.

Gabby. She looked impossibly elegant in a black dress, her hair perfect, laughing. She was with a man in a tailored suit, his smile slick and smug. Wesley Johns. Her childhood friend. The rig foreman was there too, along with the debt collector I' d been sending payments to for years. They were all fawning over her.

"Ms. Fuller," my foreman said, his voice dripping with respect, "I tried to find reasons to dock his pay, but he works like a man possessed. He still managed to save the half-million."

Gabby didn' t even look at him. She stroked Wesley' s hand, her voice casual, bored.

"It' s fine. I' ll just sign another IOU for two million. Make sure he' s stuck on that rig for the rest of his life."

My blood ran cold. The air left my lungs.

Wesley leaned in and kissed her cheek.

"Perfect. I just saw a vintage Porsche for a cool half-million."

He laughed, a sound that cut through me. Ms. Fuller. Fuller Oil & Gas. The company that owned the rig. The rig I had bled on for five years. It was all her. The debt, the struggle, my sacrifice-it was all a game. A lie she had built to punish me.

My entire world collapsed in that single moment.